Advisor Website Redesign
My Role: User Experience Lead
Project Scope: 5 months
Design Problem: The Nationwide Financial Advisor Sales and Service Center provides access to sales materials and client information for financial advisors selling Nationwide products. The site was in need of a visual refresh and site architecture revision, as data indicated that advisors had trouble finding key information, like forms. I led a small UX team (information architect, usability analyst, and visual designer) and worked with our business and marketing partners to define the goal state for the site.
UX Approach: Requirements gathering for the redesign effort included gathering an extensive amount of background/third-party research to define what a best-in-class advisor site should be, documenting user issues from past usability studies and survey data from Foresee, and working with partners to conduct a content inventory and high-level content strategy. Using this data, we identified key user tasks around client servicing and sales support needs. Task analyses directed our efforts to surface key tasks as we redesigned the navigation and post-login portal page.
We then conducted a series of usability tests as we iterated on the navigation and content. We refined the navigation naming conventions based on feedback from advisors and tested the key tasks that we had previously identified to ensure that site restructure fixed findability issues that had been previously reported. Part of the navigation approach was to restructure the site into distinct pre- and post- login spaces and provide content for prospective advisors, and this tested well.
As the UX design lead, my job was to manage the UX portion of the project, including deliverable quality, budget, and timeline. I worked closely with the team and collaborated on the navigation and design. I also handled communication with the business, marketing, and product stakeholders and created and vetted a feature list through a series of focus groups and working sessions to create a prioritized feature list and implementation roadmap.
Result: The pre-login space launched in late 2011 at Nationwidefinancial.com. The post-authenticated navigation and portal are in process.